30 November 2008

Create & Edit Web Pages
On The Go Without Dragging Out Your Laptop

I frequently travel for business as well as for pleasure and my phone keeps me up to date on all the latest news and happenings, it helps me to stay in contact with my office and to actively participate in the forum discussions but I still miss something!

You see, I’m one of those old school webmaster’s that started building websites with HomeSite years ago and what I really miss when I am on the go is ability to make some changes, fix mistakes (that I often make) and to update site on the fly straight from my phone!

Of course, the HTML markup of a web page can be written with any text editor, I created template for this site just with Photoshop and Notepad but specialized HTML editors can offer convenience and add more functionality and that’s what HTML Editor for S60 devices offers!

With this little but yet useful application you can edit, manage and create your very own html files on the go via mobile! Thanks to the S60 HTML Editor and the SIC FTP Client it is finally possible to edit and even write pages directly on S60 device and than upload it and update site immediately without need for a PC!!!

So, in short, S60 HTML Editor is a simple text editor for Symbian S60 devices designed for editing HTML files. The major feature of the editor is fast and easy inserting HTML tags and entities and the only feature that I miss is ability to preview the page during editing in default web browser application for example! This the cute little script and you should give it a try, but only if you promise you'll not to use it while driving :]

The editor uses Call key as a functional key. Press:

• Call + Left key to go to the beginning of line;
• Call + Right key to go to the end of line;
• Call + Up key to page up;
• Call + Down key to page down;
• Call + Select key to open the quick move menu.

To insert any HTML tag press Right softley. Select a tag from tag menu or press Custom... and type your own.

Press Options to open the main menu.

• Insert tag - Open tags menu. You can quickly insert any tag you want. See below for detail.
• Insert entity - Open entities menu. You can quickly insert the most often HTML entities.
• Search - Open find and replace menu:
  • Find - Find the first occurence of entered text. Search starts from current position of cursor.
  • Find next - Find the next occurence of the same text.
  • Replace - Find and replace the first occurence of the text with another text string.
• File - File operations:
  • Save - Save the file. For new files asks for the file name and path.
  • Save as - Save the text in another file. Asks for the name and the path.
  • Open - Load file. The current text will be replaced with contents of selected file.
  • New - Drop all text and clear the editor.
  • New from template - You can select simple HTML and HTML 4.0 transitional templates for the new file.
• Help - Short help.
  • Help - Display short help on the major functions of the editor.
  • About - Show copyright info.
• Exit - Close the editor and return to OS.

To insert an HTML tag press Right softke (labeled Tag), select a tag and press OK. To select a tag you can simply scroll the list, or start typing to quickly find the necessary tag.

Also, you can use Custom... option - just type the tag you need and press OK.

The editor has a trivial control of opened tags for many tags. When you select the same tag next time, the editor will insert appropriate closing tag. For example, you want to insert a link into your text. You have selected a href from the menu for the first time, and you have recieved a string <a href="">| in your text.

Then you have typed an URL and a label text. Now you have the following text: <a href="http://code.google.com/">Google Code| (Vertical line marks the cursor position). Now, to enter a closing tag, select a href once more and you will get: <a href="http://code.google.com/">Google Code</a>|. That's all!

Currently, the program is deployed as a single Python script. You should download the latest release and put the file s60htmled.py to the folder !:Python on your device.

Then start Python interpreter, press left softkey for the menu and select Run script. Select the scripts and press OK.